Mr. Movie review: ‘Rough Night’ is rough and not-so-funny comedy

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Kate McKinnon, left, and Jillian Bell in a scene from “Rough Night.” Macall PolayAP

This image released by Sony Pictures shows Kate McKinnon, left, and Jillian Bell in a scene from “Rough Night.” Macall PolayAP

To be fair, Rough Night isn’t aimed at men. While I’m a pretty good judge of what’s funny and what isn’t, I may not be the best judge of the comedy aimed at younger women.

Is that what it’s called? Comedy?

Rough Night is directed by Lucia Aniello and co-written by Aniello and one of the film’s stars, Paul W. Downs. They conceived, wrote, produced and directed Comedy Central’s mini-series Time Traveling Bong. Sorry, I missed that one but the concept ought to tell you a lot about the level of humor in Rough Night.

I often base my decision on how funny the film is on the reaction of the screening audience. Most of the women — other than the two sitting behind me — didn’t laugh much.

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The other two howled all the way through and laughed at scenes where nothing was happening at all. I suspect for one of three reasons. One, they’ve never seen a movie before, or they were watching a sitcom or something on a mobile device. Or, maybe they’re related to someone involved with the movie and wanted to help.

That’s the only possible explanation because this movie is dreadful from start to finish.

Scarlett Johansson’s Jess is getting married. Her college buds throw her a bachelorette party and they accidentally kill a male stripper.

Jess is running for political office and can’t afford the scandal. Plus the women have been drugging and drinking and by the time they make up their mind to call the police, it’s too late.

Their solutions are predictable and have — outside of the language, more mature themes and some of the film’s adult props — more in common with TV comedy than movies.

Johansson’s co-stars are Jillian Bell (Fist Fight), Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon with a horrible Australian accent, Zoe Kravitz (Mad Max: Fury Road) and Llana Glazer, one of the stars and creators of the Bong mini-series.

I can’t knock the acting. They’re all pretty good considering the limited material. The film just wasn’t that funny.